The field of the disclosure relates generally to circuit breakers and, more particularly, to circuit breakers including rotatable contact arms.
Circuit breakers are often used to protect, in a residential, industrial, utility, or commercial environment, against overcurrent conditions, ground fault conditions, or other system anomalies that are undesirable and require the circuit breaker to interrupt the flow of current through the circuit breaker. In some circuit breakers, a movable contact is separated from a stationary contact when the circuit breakers experience an overcurrent condition, such as a short circuit event. Separating the circuit breaker contacts, generally referred to as “tripping” the circuit breaker when caused by protection reasons or “opening” the circuit breaker when caused by control reasons, interrupts the flow of current through the circuit breaker.
In industrial settings, for example, the circuit breaker serves to prevent damage to equipment and machines that, in many cases, represent a significant investment by a business and on whose operation the business relies. The circuit breaker carries out this function by interrupting electrical current between the equipment and a power center or transformer when the circuit breaker contacts are separated. However, sometimes the circuit breaker contacts may not remain separated during an overcurrent condition. For example, sometimes after separating from the stationary contact, the movable contact rebounds and moves back towards the stationary contact. Accordingly, at least some known circuit breakers include retention systems that retain the movable contact in a position separated from the stationary contact. However, the retention systems increase the amount of force required to separate the contacts. As a result, the contacts do not fully separate to interrupt the flow of current through the circuit breaker in some overcurrent conditions, which may impact operation of equipment and machines. Moreover, the retention systems increase the cost and time required to assemble the circuit breakers.